Jatuporn’s lese majeste charge dropped

11052012

A couple of days ago PPT posted that disgruntled Puea Thai Party member Chalong Riewraeng had grumbled that Jatuporn Promphan might be made a Cabinet member. He complained about Jatuporn facing lese majeste charges and that a court verdict was expected in a month. As we said then, we didn’t know why Chalong would know about this.

Now, at The Nation, it is reported that the Department of Special Investigation’s rather slimy director-general Tharit Pengdit has said that DSI has “found no cause to invoke the lese majeste law against Pheu Thai MP Jatuporn…”. DSI “recommends that the charges be dropped…”.

This case refers to Army chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha’s complaint that Jatuporn’s speech to a 10 April 2011 anniversary rally by red shirts, commemorating the first attack by the army on red shirt demonstrators rallying in 2010, constituted lese majeste.

At that rally, held at Democracy Monument, Jatuporn spoke of the Army’s “royally-bestowed bullets” as he launched an attack on the military and the Abhisit Vejjajiva government in his speech.

At the time, Tharit was hot on this complaint and appeared to support the Army boss. Now he sings a different tune. Tharit says that the investigations “found that [the speech] could not be construed as violating Article 112 of the Criminal Code…”.

PPT wonders if this means that all 19 red shirt leaders accused by the military on this anniversary event have also had their lese majeste charges dropped?

Now that this case is dropped, PPT would hope that the lese majeste timid Yingluck Shinawatra government would, in the context of Ampol Tangnopakul’s death in custody, begin releasing all of the political prisoners held on lese majeste charges.